The bell went around four. I glanced at the clock as I left the kitchen, headed for the front door. When I opened it, Alison was there, a black-and-red-camouflage rucksack dangling from one shoulder. I held the door open to let her crush her way into the flat.
She headed straight for the bedroom and I followed, heeling the door shut behind me.
She was bent over, fumbling with something on my bedside table and then the music started. Horrible jangly guitars, whiny male voice and weak, trebly-sounding drums. Turning, Alison nodded at me and I nodded back, not entirely sure what I was agreeing to. The music slowed to a crawl and the voice keened over it, insistent. Even though I couldn’t make out a word, it struck me that I’d heard it before, somewhere. Or something enough like it to remind me. I couldn’t place where, though.
Alison pulled off the little green anorak, exposing a darker, almost emerald blouse underneath, rumpled by the planes of her body. Her breasts jutted in it, rock solid and unmoving. She began to unbutton it, the large square fingers trying to force the tiny pearlescent buttons back through the even tinier buttonholes. Then she gave up and pulled the whole thing over her head and tossed it onto the carpet beside my bed.
She rolled onto her back to pull the short skirt down over her arse and thighs and I climbed onto the bed next to her.
She sloughed it off onto the floor near to where the top had landed and rolled to face me. Her arms came around me, pulling me to her and her big rough face plastered itself onto mine, the tongue scratching its way through my lips and into my mouth.
She squeezed me tightly, pressing the air out of my lungs and probably leaving a few scuffs around my back and sides. When she eventually let go, I sucked in a chestful of air and we looked at each other. The music stopped with some sort of a flourish.
“Hang on a sec,” she sat up, leaned over me and snared the rucksack in a massive paw. Drums crashed in, followed by more jangly guitars.
“Here we are.” she withdrew something and held it out to me. A carton of Greek-style natural yogurt – with honey. She tore off the lid and rammed a finger in. She let it drip into my lap and over my chest until she reached my nipple, where she smeared what was left firmly over the nipple and towards the other one.
She repeated the process with my other nipple until the sticky smears met in the middle.
Leaning forward, she began dragging her tongue over the trail of yogurt, making a slight sucking noise as she did. When I glanced down, a faint red line showed where her tongue had been.
Alison carried on licking and lapping until the yogurt was gone and my chest, stomach and thighs were criss-crossed with wide reddened lines.
“Your turn,” she breathed, fingering yogurt onto one of her own nipples and rubbing it in a circular motion around the aureole and down over the rock-hard breast.
“Come on,” she purred. “No need to be shy, is there?” she seized my head playfully and forced it onto the mess of yogurt on her breast. I licked at it experimentally, tasting the sweetness, the stickiness and feeling the grittiness of her as it scritched over my teeth. When I’d finished, she lay back and poured the yogurt, straight from the pot, onto her other breast and I watched it run down her side to pool slightly on the duvet under her.
I took my weight on my arms and leaned in on top of her, lapping at the mess she’d made.
By the time the tub was empty, I was covered in long red lines that itched and I could feel the sweet grittiness as my tongue moved it around my mouth.
If anything, the lubrication had lessened her excitement. A couple of her orgasms had sounded like the real thing, but most had seemed insipid and half-hearted.
I offered to make coffees and, once in the kitchen, took a quick suck on the tap, swilled the water around my mouth and let it fall over the couple of plates stacked in the sink.
I took the coffees back through and climbed back in beside her. She yawned and lifted an arm for me to lie, my head on her powerful chest.
We lay like that for a while, neither of us speaking, just listening to the traffic that drifted to us from the street.

Like this:

I went back to Fife last night. Hopped the bus through from the west end at Queensferry Street and less than an hour later, I was in Dunfermline’s bus station, looking around for a number 19 to take me the rest of the way.
One turned up and I got on, noting the otherfolks getting on in ones and twos, nodding briskly to each other in a couple of cases. A pair of rubbergirls, noses in the air, ignoring everyone, but shooting enough covert looks around to make sure people were watching them.
The journey didn’t take long. I had a drunk Polish guy in the seat behind me, passing comments on the rubbergirls and an older papermale who sat, doing what looked like sudoku, his head down.
Even without the app, I’d have recognised the stop. Most of the bus stood and formed a queue, the Polish guy jumping right in front of me. The chatter intensified as we were bunched closer together by the joggling of the bus as it slowed to a stop.
As I stumble-scrambled my way off the bus, I caught the driver winking at the polish guy.
“An’ I’m stuck here workin’ the night.” He said, with a smile, as I passed.
I stepped off the bus into the milling otherfolks and meatfaces. A tall paperwoman, maybe six-three, six-four, flapped loudly. As the wind caught her, she gesticulated with an arm at the lights of a pub over the road. A young guy, either made of – or wearing – leather, took her outstretched arm and helped her to remain on the ground. Looking around, I saw those two rubbergirls, hand in hand, crossing the road. Cars slowed, necks craned to look at, first them, then at the rest of us and I’m sure I saw them smirk contentedly at one another. The group started to move and I followed, in their midst, over the road and down the short steps to the path that led to the lighted doorway of the pub.
Inside, cloth, paper, wood and metal rubbed shoulders with rubber, leather and a couple of substances I couldn’t name. One in particular, blue and gritty-looking, but catching the light as she turned. My eyes kept returning to this same woman, whatever she was.
The music stopped suddenly and it was only then I noticed how loud it had been. The chatter faded quickly in the absence of sound before a stuttering of drums and I recognised that song by the metal guy who was bumped from the X-Factor last year.
All around me, hips were moving slightly with the beat and lips – meat and other – were half-shaping the words.
The blue, gritty woman walked past, laughing, her head thrown back, exposing her long navy throat. The paperguy from the bus said something as she passed him and her laughter burst around her all over again like a mushroom cloud in the gap between the metal guy’s verse and chorus.
The tall paperwoman and the Polish guy were huddled together by the jukebox, poking fingers at the screen and giggling.
I glanced around and caught the eye of one of the rubbergirls, who looked away, nudging her friend and motioning towards me with her shiny grey chin.
I bought a pint and situated myself against the edge of the dancefloor, scanning around for someone else unwilling or unable to dance.
Of course, being St Paddy’s weekend – and therefore a Guinness promotion, the dancefloor was heaving. Especially when they played that ‘bullets’ song by the rubberguy who was married to the sinn fein councillor. The place exploded.
And they played it three times that I heard. But by then, I’d got into conversation with the blue woman and her pal, a woodwoman.
It’s really bad form to ask someone what they’re made of, so I didn’t, but she was fascinating to look at. I dragged my eyes away and concentrated on the friend.
She was pale, maybe pine or one of those other near-white woods, smooth though. I couldn’t see a single splinter.
We left about eleven, hopping a taxi driven disapprovingly back to her place. She lived in the next street from a flat I lived in when I was a student.
She invited me in for the usual euphemistic coffee and I agreed, looking at my watch as if I had to be somewhere at some point.
Inside, she took off her coat and I marvelled again at her figure.
She was slim without looking like a xylophone, soft thin pale hair framing a long oval face.
Wide eyes, pale too, like washed-out denim. The wide mouth broke into a smile and she clicked the remote control at the large bulky old television that came to life and the room was suddenly full of some syrupy-sounding black guy, his big sincere face filling the screen and the voice booming from all around. It seemed to be the word “you”, over and over, but I couldn’t be sure.
She danced lightly towards me, her fingers slipping under the green top and moving back and forward, lifting it up – diagonally – over her flat, creamy stomach and giving just the slightest hint of some sort of bra nestling there.
She let the top fall back down and started flicking at the button holding her jeans together. She danced close to me and away again, her clothes brushing me with their hint of the firmness within.
I sat back in my seat, watching the show. She stripped slowly and fluidly, exposing one area, covering it up, exposing another, covering that and so on. The whole process was exciting, her teasing really turning me on.
Neither of us spoke. The music (more languid syrup) filling the room around us. Finally, she stood before me wearing only her bra as she flicked the tiny, flimsy panties off her left foot into my lap, where they landed with a little puff-sound.
She leaned forward, brought up a pale thin arm and slid a long forefinger into her mouth.
Her eyes were locked onto mine.
She dropped to a squat and leaned forward, her forehead just touching my jeans and the erection fighting to get out into the cool air of the room.
She pressed against it, rocked back and the tip of her nose moved over the head. Then her mouth was open and I felt the warmth of her breath – then the gentle pressure of her teeth through the material – then the breath, the teeth, breath, teeth, breath, then she stood up, her smile widening. She held out a hand, which I took.
She led me out of the lounge, back through the hall and through a doorway hung with a beaded curtain that clinkled as we passed through it.
Her bedroom was all soft greens and blues, giving it a nautical feel. Wispy maidenhair plants hung down around the futon that took up most of the middle of the room. Cupboard doors faced inwards on every wall and far above, a skylight showed blackness or cloud cover or something.
She manoeuvred me onto the bed and sat me down, straddling my lap to keep me in place.
I looked at her, still wearing the bra and only the bra, hearing-feeling the pale shavings scritching over my jeans.
She lifted my shirt out of my waistband, unbuttoned the top two buttons and strong supple fingers slid it up over my head. Those same fingers traced down my chest, slid over a nipple and brushed away.
“I have a confession to make,” she sighed. She took her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. “I’ve got a couple of knots on my breasts – it’s nothing catching, I promise.” She lifted my wrists, placed my hands on her firm breasts.
“But can I leave my bra on? Is that ok?” She smiled again. “Or,” the smile widened like before. “How about I take my bra off?” She leaned in close enough to whisper in my ear. “But I blindfold you first. mm?”
Unable to speak, my throat dry, I nodded.
She snatched up something from behind me, something dark and began to wrap it around my head and face, filling my eye sockets. The room fell away into blackness and I held onto her voice.
“Good. Good boy.” She sighed.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a blowjob like it. It went on for what seemed like hours, before she pulled off and slid me inside her smooth, hard opening. It didn’t take long after all that build-up and she sighed contentedly as I gasped her name out between gritted teeth, every muscle in my body tensed.
She moved around, replacing the bra before removing the blindfold. I blinked in the dim soft light of her room and we spooned into each other in the middle of the great big futon until it was time for me to go.

Last night, after missing last week’s, I went back to that pub for the clothfolks’ night. I made a point of arriving an hour and a quarter after things kicked off, making my entrance with a splash – and noticing several heads turn to clock me as I threaded between the tables.
Now that I’m a familiar-ish face here, I can nod and smile at faces I recognise and expect the same in return.
I exchanged a few words at the bar with an older woman, she must have been at least sixty, in a thin, almost see-through material. I tried not to stare at the veins and the movement of her muscles over the bones that held her up. Although well outside my age range, she had a deep, dirty laugh and as we stood chatting, she used it several times, punctuating our conversation.
I noticed the table of posh girls, all deep maroon and bottle-green satins and velvets. A couple of them kept looking over, nudging each other and giggling. I bathed them in my warmest smile that said, “Don’t be ashamed of who – or what – you are. Just be everything you can be.”
Then I went over and joined them.
It was obvious that the paler green one was attracted to me, her eyes flitting across at me and away again. Then flicking back into her lap, a rosy blush staining her dark green cheeks.
We got talking and her friends just kind of faded into the background and before I knew it, we were in a taxi, heading back to somewhere she lived.
We sat close enough to just touch and no more each time the taxi hit a bump, her thigh brushing mine for a moment. A soft hand snaked out from time, touched mine and slid back into her folds.
We got out of the taxi in a dark, anonymous street, big houses faced us across hard and tended lawns. Massive trees hung in every garden like disembodied punctuation marks.
She ushered me through a gate which she closed carefully behind me and we followed a path around the side of the house.
At the back, she opened a small door made up of tiny glass panels and held it for me as I took careful steps into the darkness as I head the door close.
Her small soft hand touched my arm, slid down to take my hand and she muzzled up against my back.
I turned, let her slide round in my arms and brought my face down onto hers. Her mouth was softer, even warmer than her hands. It tasted slightly of the brightly-coloured drinks she’d been sipping in the pub. An artificial fruit-sugar taste and her hands slid up under my jacket and began tugging my shirt out of my jeans.
I brought my hands up onto her sides, then the sides of her breasts, pulpy inside the tough cotton of her bra. She sighed and pressed herself against me. Her mouth clamped harder onto mine and I could feel the material of her face give as it pressed against mine. I pulled back to take a breath and the soft down of her cheek tickled my chin.
My eyes had more or less accustomed themselves to the gloom and I could see the shape of her, a dark outline against the paler grey of whatever was behind her.
She took a little step back and I heard her shoes scuffle slightly as she reached inside herself and there was a short draught as she flapped herself open. When she stepped forward to fling her arms around me again, her folds draped around me and her soft little centre was hotter than warm and we were kissing again, our front teeth clacked and she smiled as she said “sorry” around it and I pressed my tongue in on top of hers, feeling the shiny hardness of those tiny pale green teeth and the soft give of her velvet face.
I moved my hands up, slowly until I had a breast cupped in either one. I realised that the firmness I’d felt earlier wasn’t a bra, just stiff layered velvet covering the underside of both breasts and holding them up.
I pressed and squeezed, following her breathing – it was more like sighing, really – and her arms tightened around my back, pulling herself against me.
We stayed like that for several minutes. Her breathing slowed, became lighter.
She pulled back from me as if looking into my face and began to move downwards, pulling me down with her.
We arranged ourselves on the floor, on top of something soft-ish and she wriggled into position beneath me, her fine down brushing my stomach and thighs.
Although I couldn’t see a thing down here, it was powerfully erotic and I let her take charge, moving my erection against the folds of her opening.
I held my breath.
She slipped the head inside her – I could tell by the sudden feeling of wet warmth – and began moving her hips back and forward, her breath coming out in short deep gushes with each stroke.
I knew I couldn’t hold off for long and told her so.
“S’allright,” she gasped around my tongue. “Do it. Just do it.” Her words tumbled out in the breathy sighing and I felt myself climbing to my orgasm. Her movements were more frenzied now, pushing and pulling, her hips slamming into mine and giving slightly each time.
I think I clenched as I came, my fingers sinking deep into the soft layers of her, my thighs flicking spastically as the drained feeling hit me and she was sighing these “oh – oh – oh” sounds and I held her to me and our bodies relaxed together, our arms still around each other.

Like this:

Well, last night went pretty well. I got the bus at St Andrew’s Square and it was an express. An hour and a half later, I was in Cowdenbeath. My second time here and I’m already starting to recognise the place.
I met her in a different pub this time, a brightly-lit drinking hole, filled, even this early on with what looked like serious career drinkers.
She was wearing a 1970s-looking zip-up jacket in one of these artificial leather-substitutes you see on tv. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, dark and glossy. She seemed pleased to see me, her mouth widening into a selfish-looking grin as I came through the door and spotted her, changing direction, weaving through the tablesful of hardened-looking drunks.
Some of them watched me with their pale, liquid eyes as I passed. One or two swivelled to take in her and it stuck me that maybe the teuchters didn’t dig the whole mixed marriage thing.
“So when ah goes up ti the coort,” one was saying as I passed. “The cunt’s went and gone and died, eh?” Solid and tired-looking, with massive hands, he shook his head while looking around his companions.
“Kin right.” One said, but they were already fading behind me. She was smiling and I didn’t even want to stay here for a drink, I wanted to be at hers, my face buried in her firm supple body.
She looked like she felt the same way. We struggled to at least look like we cared about our drinks, one of her feet playing with mine under the table. She stood, suddenly, holding my gaze. I left a good inch and a half in my glass and followed her between the scuffed tables and out through the smokers huddled around the doorway.
All conversation ceased as we burst through the middle of them. Half turning, she reached up and raised an arm towards me. I speeded up for half a step and took her hand in my own. She stopped, pulled me in towards her and let out a cheeky giggle.
Back at hers, she keyed open her door and turning, pushed me in. The usual short hall, one or more doors on each of five slightly curved walls. She pointed, her pointy finger dancing from one door to the next, describing a jagged circle.
“Toilet, shower,” she turned a little. “Kitchen,” another few dozen degrees. “Living room, box-room, spare room.” She stopped, her arm sticking staight out from her body.”The bedroom.” She moved toward it, motioning with her head, the short leatherish jacket falling from her shoulders, sliding down her back.
I watched her undress slowly, deliberately. Over the years, I’ve seen many women undress, from controlled-seductive types (like Stella, who flashed into my head at that moment) to, at the other end of the scale, the Alisons of this world who just tear ‘em off and kick ‘em away. But I’ve never seen anything approaching this.
She peeled away layers, slid things down an arm or a leg, tossed them in soft parabolas onto nearby furniture. I was hypnotised.
She snapped her fingers, breaking the spell and beckoning me to join her on top of the bed.
I shoved my clothes off, Alison-Style and clambered up next to her. When I laid my hand on the slightly puckered skin, it was cool and firm. She rolled onto her side and her hands were cool around my back, pulling me to her. With a sort of flash, our bodies touched. She was several degrees colder than me. The flat was warm, comfortably so. It must be her own operating temperature. I put these thoughts out of my head and kissed her.
Our mouths – then our tongues – came together, soft and it was like sinking into a lovely cool cloud. we rolled back, her taking my weight and I moved my hands up onto the small, high breasts. When I squeezed, they gave slightly, then popped back to their original shape. I found this erotic and did this several times. Each time, she’d moan softly, her eyes closing.
I moved down and took one of the black, stubby nipples in my mouth. Up close, her breasts smelled like the school cloakroom on a rainy morning, like wet policewomen.
Her hand – I don’t know which one – was closing and opening quickly around my erection, pulling it to her as if she was starving. I moved my hips forward and pushed it towards her. She was kissing all over my face and neck, tiny little pecks like a soft toy losing its temper. I began licking her face in between her kisses, the flat bland taste of her feeding my growing erection.
She wriggled her back, moving towards the middle of her bed, taking me with her, the shiny plastic of her skritting slightly as my palm stuck to it. I pulled it free gently and she moaned again, her arms encircling my back and crushing me down onto her.
I kissed the end of her nose, just the tiniest nibble and pulled my face back to look at her. The half-closed eyes snapped open and her mouth widened into a grin, the blue-black lips stretching as her tongue popped out, moved over them and retracted again.
We came together again, our stomachs hitting and sticking and dragging apart each time on the downswing. Her cool, pale grey hands slid in between us, took hold of my shaft and guided it into her. Inside her was cool and soaking and soft. I pushed in harder, feeling no resistance. She moaned again, a light pale thing like a hamster’s tiny orgasm.
I noticed a tiny mark on her stomach, touched it with with my fingertips, felt the raised line. curious, I disentangled my arms and began kissing my way over chin and throat, over the shiny firm breasts and down over the slightly puffy stomach until I reached it. On closer inspection, it was a tiny patch, a miniscule square, raised from the rest of her stomach.
Her head came up. “You found it, then?”
“Aye, what is it?”
“My ex husband.” her shoulders gave a shrug, her head bobbed. “Another life, y’know?”
I nodded, tracing my fingers down her arm and across the shininess of her lower back, curving up at her buttock. She leaned in and I leaned into the kiss. Our outstretched tongues met first, then our lips and her face was all over me, sucking and lapping hungrily at my mouth.
We stayed where we were all afternoon, kissing and touching in the space between and around her tiny moans and gasps and then stopping, just before I went over the edge.
It was early evening when we got dressed and headed back round to the bus stop. We hugged in the shelter like lovestruck teenagers until my bus arrived and we pulled ourselves apart for me to hand my ticket to the driver.
When I sat down, she was walking away, not even so much as glancing over her shoulder.

I was in the hospital, the big sign under the clock shouted ‘WEDNESDAY’ in harsh capitals. In fact, the clock itself said 11:59 in bright red square digits. I was so confused, I couldn’t remember if it was midnight or noon. Just couldn’t put my finger on it.
I didn’t recognise the ward, but here I was, back in the same old infirmary, all the colours the same regulation national health pastels.
And not a single face I recognised. I started to wonder how I could let anyone know where I was. When it hit me I didn’t know how long I’d be here – or, how long I’d been here this time – the screaming started to pour out, loud enough to be someone else, pouring in my ears instead of out of my mouth.
I caught myself screaming – back in my room – as I came out of it, half-awake, sticking out of a heavy sweat-wet duvet weighed a ton on me.
I tried to get my breath back. The sunlight poured in my windows, warming the room and dazzling the residual headache left by the dream.
It was horribly realistic, though. I slumped back on the damp chill pillows. Felt the ache in my shoulders where I’d tensed them in my sleep.
It was then that I realised I could smell hospital. Like a terrifying straddling two islands moving rapidly apart, me teetering, about to drop into an ocean of the madness, the see of my room, the smell of infirmary… I closed my eyes and breathed slow and deep like they tell you to do.
It took a few minutes – they stretched like hours – but I was eventually calm enough to get up and into a dressing-gown and make it to the kitchen.
I had a coffee. Then another and by then, the day, my flat, the world as I’d left it last night had pretty much resumed normal service once more.
I checked my phone, realised I’d forgotten to put it on to charge last night. There was a message from Stella, asking how I was and when I hoped to be back at work.
I sketched out what the doctor had said and left it at that.
I didn’t go to that clothfolks do last night (is THAT why I dreamt of the infirmary? It’s in pretty much the same area.)
My thinking was, if I suddenly appeared from nowhere and showed up every single week, I’d appear desperate – and that never leads to success in any scene.
I was thinking about it last night, from time to time, I remember.
I went out to Asda – with a written list this time – and there was a copy of the meatro lying on the seat. For those of you outside the UK, the meatro is a fairly right-wing free newspaper free on public transport, in doctors’ waiting rooms and so on. Anywhere people congregate, really.
I don’t usually read it, but this one had a particularly unflattering picture of Justin Bieber on the cover which caught my attention.
Despite myself, I began to leaf through it. Someone from Eastenders is pregnant, a name I recognise from ‘Big Brother’ a year or two back has a fitness DVD out and there, on page twelve was a picture of that rubbergirl who was the runner-up on X-Factor last year.
You know the one I mean. Dark grey, almost blue-black body, big bluey grey eyes. So I started reading.
What I read there shocked me.
According to this paper, there was a conspiracy afoot to make Britain a predominantly other nation by 2020.
Cloth education in our schools, denim bands filling our charts and to prove it, a photo of two meatgirls, one in rubber, one in leather, up the right-hand side of the page.
A ‘terrorism expert’ was wheeled out to spout the usual tabloid fear-fodder. They’re outnumbering us, they won’t rest until Britain is under other-law and that perennial favourite, ‘they call humans meat-eyes. The fact that everyone knows that came from a joke Ben Elton made in the 1980s has been conveniently skipped over.

Like this:

I ran into that Welsh coalgirl online this afternoon. I apologised for not being in touch and said I’d been in hospital. I sort of missed out the bits about the coma and the headaches.
Strangely, but happily, she seemed fine with my unconvincing explanation and arranged that she’d visit next month. From Friday the twelfth until Monday the sixteenth.
I made a note to put in for a day off – if I was back at work by then.
So that’s something to look forward to. Another weekend spent with that beautiful smooth black body.
I needed a couple of things so I got my shoes on and headed out to Morrison’s. Of course, by the time I got there, I’d forgotten the entire mental list of what i needed! I was drifting up and down the aisles, considering products, trying to remember what I’d come here for.
It was useless. For the life of me, I couldn’t think what was in my fridge or cupboards. I was hoping something would jump out at me, but no.
Then I spotted him. At the exact same moment he saw me and before I knew what I was doing, I’d smiled, raising a hand and he’s done the same back at me.
It was the denim guy from that night in Inverkeithing. And by then, it was too late. We were talking.
He had a couple of items in his basket so I picked up bread and milk and we made our way to the checkout.
Outside, it had turned slightly cold – and I had nothing better to do – so I pointed at the door of one of those anonymous chain-pubs and we headed in there. Inside, it was dark and quiet, like an ‘Edinburgh’ themed pub. We got a table as far away as we could from the bar and both the old men sitting by themselves, nursing halfs-and-nips, Neither of them paid us any attention, but I definitely spotted the spotty adolescent behind the bar throwing us covert looks.
Denim-guy told me his name was ‘Quo’, the hangover from childhood bullying and playground smart-arses.
His mum was meat, his father some ship-in-the-night otherbloke at some punk rock concert one night.
His mother, left nursing a hangover and holding the baby, tried her best to like him, but it was an uphill struggle.
She eventually married some bloke and went on to have a couple of ‘proper’ kids, who edged him out of the nest.
As fast as they could. He’d left home the day he was old enough to sign on and never looked back.
“Chances are,” he looked at me over the top of his pint. “They never even noticed I’d stopped being there.”
We’d had three, four by then, enough to loosen both our tongues. I told him about the coma, the missing month and how you left a hospital these days, but I left out the recent headache and hallucinations, though.
We parted company about seven, having shared e-dresses and cellphone numbers.
It must’ve been shite, growing up him. A mother that didn’t want you, and the bullying he must’ve taken at the school would’ve been terrible. A weaker guy wouldn’t have made it and I wonder if I would.
There’s still discrimination against otherfolks – even nowadays – can you believe that? But can you imagine what it must have been like, growing up other in the eighties? Thatcher had everyone fired up, hating anyone that was different.
And he’d have had it tighter than anyone. A double agent, distrusted by both communities.
There but for the grace of God, though, eh?

Like this:

The headache kicked in about seven, maybe seven-thirty, I don’t know. I wasn’t watching the time. One minute, there I was, talking to the rubbergirl, the next, I was on the floor, holding my skull as if it was trying to explode.
That’s the only way I can describe it. Because it really did feel like it wanted to explode.
I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to my rubber friend, it was that sudden.
So, the game’s probably a bogey. Any guy who disappears off the internet as fast as that, probably has a wife who approaches silent and unexpected.
I don’t even know what time I got off the floor and made it to the bathroom, it was that bad.
Like a sinister magician was ramming knives in from all different angles, hot-and-cold pain coming from all sides.
It was about midnight when the nausea started to calm down and I looked at my watch. Four, four-and-a-half hours, locked into that world of pain. I’m not really one to moan, but this really was something else. Even in the hospital, it was never this bad.
The other bit I’m not sure, even now, whether I can write this.
You’ll probably think I’m mad, but it’s not funny. I was hallucinating.
Not the dreamy trippy sort that teenagers and young people talk about, where the edges of everything are blurred and it’s all warm and fuzzy. No, this was like bear-shaped arms pushing through the walls and the suggestion of cold voices, making obscene suggestions.
Shit.
I can’t even write about this now, it’s bringing it all back. Just thinking about it’s releasing all the tiny, razor-sharp fragments of memory, gouging their cruel way to the surface.
I managed to get myself a glass of water around two and my phone was flashing. A message. Well, it turned out to be three messages – all from Stella.
I looked at them – this morning – after an uncomfortable night, studded with queasy dreams, deserts of churned-up sand and filthy oil coating large expanses of freezing water.
The pain had lessened to a dull ache when I moved my head. My stomach and the inside of my chest hurt, probably from the retching and there was a gritty feeling whenever my eyes moved to one side or the other.
Good thing I’m not going back to work today. Maybe I will have to see the doctor again about sitting this out a bit longer.